Unifying Themes Redux

061502

Seattle quartet Botch tore through the 1990s, tying metal, punk, and math rock into a tight, noisy knot. The band released only two proper albums during a decade-long run-- 1999's American Nervoso and 2000's We Are the Romans-- but left a large legacy. Contemporaries (Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Isis) and descendents (Norma Jean, Every Time I Die) have borrowed from Botch's hybridized hardcore. Botch members have also kept the torch lit, continuing to shred in These Arms are Snakes, Minus the Bear, and Roy.

Given that impact, one might expect Botch's music to sound bracingly unique. But even its most ambitious work is full of recognizable influences, from Helmet and the Unsane to Metallica and Black Sabbath. This is truest of the early material, which Unifying Themes Redux compiles from 7" tracks, comp appearances, and demos. (It's the first in Hydra Head's Botch reissue series; expanded versions of American Nervoso and We Are the Romans are due later this year).

Since Botch clung tightly to its influences, the achievements here are subtle. Much of Unifying Themes Redux is straight-up, high-octane hard rock, with minor glimpses of the complex structures that would mark the group's later years. Here, simple energy and volume easily distinguish Botch's music.

The key is the guitar playing of David Knudson. His tone is sharply metallic yet openly noisy, both cutting through and washing over the band's frantic mix. On "God vs. Science", his biting chords pound and jangle, while on the slamming "Closure", his seesawing noise leaves smoldering trails. Yet Knudson doesn't merely spray notes onto his band's canvas: On "Ebb", he rhymes with Brian Cook's stark bass and Dave Verellen's metronomic screams.

Verellen's voice is perhaps the one stumbling block on the road to Botch appreciation. When his throat-ripping howl works, it folds into the surrounding noise like wind chimes thrashed by a tornado. But his range is narrow, and when the music crosses into melodrama, he becomes a cartoon. A cover of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna" (from the opera Carmina Burana) sounds like an unintentional joke, and "Stupid Me"'s chant of "I'm not gonna stand for this anymore" makes the teen-angst clichés of Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized" seem profound. In fact, that tendency toward the dramatic is the band's only significant flaw, at times approaching laughable bombast.

Such over-seriousness melted away in concert-- at least judging by 061502, a CD/DVD package containing the band's final performance from 2002. Here, grainy, frantically cut footage captures Botch's energy perfectly. Latter day classics like the right-angled "John Woo" and the anthemic "Frequency Ass Bandit" sound great when caked in sweaty concert grime, and even the band's caffeinated cover of the B-52's "Rock Lobster" (rendered awkwardly on Unifying Themes Redux) flames up nicely in the live setting.

Over 70 minutes, this set gets wearying. But if you feel your eyelids closing, switch to the band's DVD commentary track, where self-deprecating humor and the sounds of beer cans opening offer welcome relief. It also gives a hint as to why Botch's music works so well: As complex as they could get, these four always had fun.